2.2.5. Sphinx

The configuration consists of two sections:

• Data source (source) - configuration of the data source and its name (in the example db_source):
  • Data type (type) — data source type (in the example mysql).
  • Database connection data (sql_host, sql_port, sql_user, sql_pass, sql_db) — credentials for connection to MySQL databasewhere the information for indexing will come from.
  • Preliminary request (sql_query_pre) - a request that will be before the main request for receiving data from the database (in the example SET NAMES utf8 - setting UTF-8 encoding).
  • The main query (sql_query) - a request to get the necessary data from the database for indexing (in the example select id, title, content from table — columns id, title and content from the table table).
  • Other directives - allow you to define the order of grouping, filtering, sorting (detailed information can be found in official documentation).
• Indexing options (index) — the configuration of the index and its name (in the example test_index):
  • Data source for indexing (source) - the name of the data source, where the information for indexing will come from (in the example db_source - see above).
  • The path where the index data will be stored (path) - the absolute path to the file with indices (in the example /home/example/.system/sphinx/test_index).
  • Morphology settings (morphology) — the name of the library (in the example stem_ru), which will be used to search for a word with different word forms — for example, by request "dog" results with variants will be returned "dogs", "dog", "dogs" etc.
  • Saving words in the index in their original form (index_exact_words) — when used in conjunction with the directive expand_keywords allows you to return more relevant results on request (in the example 1 — included).
  • The minimum word length for indexing (min_word_len) — used by default 1, but words of this length usually do not carry a semantic load (in the example 3).
  • Other directives - allow you to define the order of grouping, filtering, sorting (detailed information can be found in official documentation).

To enable lemmatization support, you need to place the files of the necessary dictionaries in the hosting account and add the section to the configuration:

common {
    lemmatizer_base = /home/example/path/to/sphinx/dicts/
}

A detailed description of how Sphinx works and a list of all its parameters can be found in official documentation (English).

Below you can:

• Select the protocol for accessing the Sphinx search daemon (searchd):
  • "MySQL" — Access via SphinxQL, a kind of SQL similar to MySQL.
  • "Sphinx" — Access via SphinxAPI, Sphinx's own API.
• Enable or disable logging of requests to Sphinx - query_log.

After clicking "Save configuration":

• Sphinx will restart.
• If the configuration finds partitions describing disk search indexes:
  • Separate cron tasks will be automatically created for them on the tab "Indexes" with a frequency of updates every 15 minutes.
  • Index creation will start immediately after saving the configuration file (it may take some time).

Columns:

• "Index" Is the name of the index. Indicated in configuration in the section with indexing parameters.
• "Update frequency" — the current schedule for starting indexing in the standard cron format. By default, indexing starts every 15 minutes.
• "The size" Is the size of the index. The data is cached for 10 minutes.
• Buttons:
  • Pause / start — button to pause / start scheduled indexing.
  • Edit — the button for changing the indexing start schedule.
  • Delete — button to delete the index. Attention! After clicking from configuration the section with indexing parameters for this index will be deleted.